Google The Double Standard of Being an Authority Website
Posted on January 20th, 2008by Michael Gray in Google
If you’ve ever been to search engine conference and attended a site review session chances are you’ve heard panelists mention duplicate content penalties and filters. For “normal” people these problems are real, however with Google a double standard exists for trusted authority websites.
Case and point the SERP for [Green Real Estate] screen shot below:
The #7 listing goes to this page on Forbes.com
The #10 listing goes to this page on MSN.com
Ok first off I don’t mean to imply that MSN is scraping Forbes, I’m quite sure there is syndication arrangement in place and no copyright laws are being broken.
However the content is identical, so identical that Google should have no problem realizing one is copy of the other, however they don’t. The simple fact is that right now trust and authority are weighted so high within the algo that they completely trump all other factors.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Sphere: Related Content
.gif)
January 20th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Michael, if your site is trusted by Google and the only difference are the title of the page like category than all 10 categories for the same page will be listed; hence 10 copies of the same page.
Trust is the main thing with Google now days. I wonder if they rank trust manually?
January 20th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Search for [mccain] and his site is listed twice at the beginning. I’m not really sure why, but it looks like two different pages per the listings but they forward to the same place.
Looks like one forwards to the other, but Google indexes both as the authority.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
We continue to have protracted problems with Google giving huge trust and authority to newsfeed aggregator/newsfeed directory websites. Our client’s newsfeeds have gotten listed in these newsfeed websites, and Google has indexed the pages there…with the result that they’ve totally stolen our rankings for all our related search terms.
It’s similar to the old problem of proxies getting indexed displaying your content, and Google thinking the original site is the copy, then slapping it with a dup content filter.
And in situations like these, you can’t even send off a reinclusion request in Webmaster Tools, because one of the prerequisites for doing that is agreeing that you have somehow transgressed Google’s Webmaster Guidelines…I’m telling you, for the small webmaster with no personal contacts at Google, it’s a nightmare situation.
It’s in situations like these that you notice how dumb the algo really is, and how the algo actually contributes to spam in the index.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I passed this report on to some engineers to look at.
Chris Bartow, for [mccain] I see two different pages from johnmccain.com: there’s the root page, and the second page is a different page that asks if you want to contribute money or your email address.
“And in situations like these, you can’t even send off a reinclusion request in Webmaster Tools, because one of the prerequisites for doing that is agreeing that you have somehow transgressed Google’s Webmaster Guidelines”
Frank, we changed our wording to make it more clear that you don’t need to “admit guilt” if you want to send in a reconsideration request. See http://www.seo-scoop.com/2007/12/02/admission-of-guilt-will-no-longer-be-required-for-google-reconsideration-request/ for more info if you’re interested.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:59 am
Good deal, Matt. Thanks.
January 21st, 2008 at 8:31 am
Michael,
A great catch, as always. But I’m starting to wonder, why does Google need to depend on people like you to help them fix their algorithm? Aren’t they smart enough to fix it themselves?
January 21st, 2008 at 12:44 pm
No worries, Frank. There was a push going out and we were able to delete the language that people objected to the most. It was late enough in the push that we weren’t able to change the language on the reconsideration request page (just delete text), but at some point in the future I think we’ll change the language so that no one would interpret the form as requiring an admission of guilt.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Frank maybe it is not a reconsideration that you need.
If you are syndicating content in any way, you should make sure that the syndicated content has a link back to the original version so that Google can identify the original source.
There is actually a fair difference between the 2 pages, with the related links to other resources, different picture, caption to the picture, and a subtitle added on the second version.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:52 am
So lets build some trust. Wheres that Google partner scheme
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
So essentially if you hob nob with authority sites to pull off some parasite SEO, they will never challenge it, because they would be stepping on toes of some of their most staunch supporters. Scary indeed, good catch on this one Wolf.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 pm
the scary part to me is that this sort of thing happens ALL the time.